Good Mourning America announced that yesterday 2 trillion of American personal wealth "evaporated," while the Whitehouse statement was that the stock market plunge was the fault of the Europeans, which includes most of the world's Royals.

Beam me up, Scotland Yard. As we learned by the Starship Enterprise, the proper word for materializing and dematerializing is TRANSPORT.

Whether or not the recent so-called compromise on the federal budget raised any taxes is a matter of framing. As I see it, taxes on neither corporations nor the filthy rich were raised. They remain disgustingly lower than ever. On the other hand, the cuts to social welfare programs such as food stamps, WIC, and Medicaid take from recipients of these programs who otherwise would have received benefits, just as a tax takes money from citizens.

The establishment continues to maintain that at some point in the future it could come to pass that we might not be able to make our payments on the Countries debt without cutting into essential social programs so best to make cuts now. And now it looks like we are signing deals to the effect into the Nation’s malleable body of laws.